Forum:West and East
I was thinking we might enjoy having a central venue to discuss W&E as we read it, like we used to do with TL-191 on the old EZBoards, and MwIH on whatever that short-lived successor board was called. Early Comments I've read the first three chapters and, while I have a hard time even remembering who all the POVs are, I've probably seen most of them reintroduced by now (including Josef Lemp). So far just about everyone's done the bare minimum he or she needed to do to set the tone for the rest of the book. As expected, McGill introduced Shanghai in a ho-hum way; if you can't tell an interesting story set in Old Shanghai, you must be catatonic. The only minor surprise was that he introduced Vera right away; I was kind of expecting a scene or two before we watched him meet her and go through a bunch of romance novel cliches, though he'd still have to pay her for a shag. Peggy, whom we've pegged as a breakout character, spent her entire scene recounting her experiences of the previous novel to an extra so inconsequential we don't even have a first name for him. The Japanese soldier tickled my curiosity by opening up with the Siberian Tiger; it added a real sense of wonder and awe to the wilds of North Asia which I hope holds up, since the fact that he's in North Asia is the only thing that sets him apart from most other POVs. Well that's not fair, anything he shows us is pretty much guaranteed to hint, at least, at something original in this story, since the Siberian invasion is really the only radically new element HT added to the war in the last book. Otherwise, the only character so far who's given any indication that her story is going to go somewhere is Sarah Goldman, and the direction she's indicated--a coming-of-age romance story with Isidor Bruck--holds so little promise of being interesting HT might as well trade her in for her brother and give us our hundred and fifteenth soldier POV. In an effort to find entertainment value, I find myself reduced to wondering whether Isidor is some sort of kin to Herman Bruck. Turtle Fan 06:29, July 29, 2010 (UTC) :It does get better. The characters start developing addiitional traits that at least make them stand out. Some of what we predicted doesn't pan out. For example, Peggy isn't a spy, although enough weird things happen to her that I think the door is still open. Vaclav develops a rival among the POV cast. Differences start creeping in, that sort of thing. The political situation is still a mystery, but the characters are growing on me, so I'm on-board with the series at this point. TR 14:59, July 29, 2010 (UTC) ::Well that's encouraging. I was planning on slogging through anyway, but chatting as we go does make it much more pleasant. Turtle Fan 18:07, July 29, 2010 (UTC) ::You know, after I typed the bit about McGill already having met Vera as of his first scene, something struck me: From all the spoilers and reviews, it sounds like his character arc for this entire novel revolves around her. So it sounds like, if he's going to have any chance of redeeming himself in our eyes, we have to be sold on his love story. Now HT's not a romance writer, thankfully, but if this love story is indeed McGill's path to become something other than an Intermission sign, he's going to have to learn to tell a romance story in a way that makes us give a shit. Having us watch McGill meet Vera for the first time, and seeing him fall for her, would have been a good start. Now at best we'll have to have a "Wow, I've known you all this time but I've never really known you till now!" moment. Much harder to do than the other, especially for the uninitiated. Turtle Fan 18:07, July 29, 2010 (UTC) :::The love story vacillates. On one hand this is realistic, given her profession. On the other...Put it this way, there's a visit to the movies that I think exists solely to show what a crazy bastard McGill is, but I was really scratching my head as to why HT wasted five good pages on this when he could have had someone listen to the BBC or Radio Moscow or something. TR 20:03, July 29, 2010 (UTC) ::::Wait, didn't you just get the book yesterday? Damn--You read fast. Turtle Fan 21:05, July 29, 2010 (UTC) ::::Anyway, I've always liked the movie scenes. They provide opportunities for characterization, offstage information updates (via newsreels) and new historical figure articles (actors). Sounds like we didn't hit all those points here? Turtle Fan 21:05, July 29, 2010 (UTC) Finished it :Wow, that was fast. Turtle Fan 04:46, July 30, 2010 (UTC) On the whole, much happier with this than HW. Characters do develop, if not dramatically, but enough to make me care. Plus lots of stuff that didn't happen in OTL, which is always good. :That, or rather the lack of it, is what we've bitchd about for the last year, so an improvement is nice. My complaint about lack of political insight still stands. And I don't see that changing much. By WiH we had Morrell the military genius, Flora the budding politician, Anne the falling politician, Featherston the budding Hitler, etc. I don't see any of our curent crop rising to greatness in the New World Order after volume six. :I was going to say "There's nothing wrong with a cast full of grunts and ordinary schlubs," but now that I think of it that is unusual. There's always someone--Yeager, Jager, Drucker, and a couple of others in Worldwar (plus those, like Atvar and Molotov, who were already great when the story started); Pekka and Fernao in Derlavai (same caveat for Rathar and, umm, the old naked black guy whose name always escapes me despite the fact that I really did like him); in DoI, the old guy who turned into Lord Haw-Haw, I guess, though of course I didn't bother finishing that one. Turtle Fan 04:46, July 30, 2010 (UTC) Also the ending of the book did leave me wondering if my Stalin's War prediction might still be possible. TR 04:23, July 30, 2010 (UTC) :Intriguing. Turtle Fan 04:46, July 30, 2010 (UTC) By the way, don't feel like you're under any obligation to hold off on spoilers for my sake. Throw up whatever the hell you want. I've never objected to people spoiling a story for me, and anyway, it's easy enough to avoid stuff up here. Turtle Fan 04:46, July 30, 2010 (UTC) Something bothered me on reflection: while I'm "used to" (although not thrilled with) HT's decision to downplay govt decisions, France and Italy are still completely ignored at the political level. While we do have Harcourt, it would still have been nice to hear some statement from Daladier to the effect of "France will keep wussing and pussing through this war until we feel we have won." Or some follow up on De Gaulle. Italy is even worse. In fairness, this may be because HT wants us to understand that Italy is doing absolutely nothing in Europe, but I think few characters saying "Wow, Italy is doing absolutely nothing in Europe" would have been a realistic convesation for a few Germans to have. As an aside, we now have Italy falling to the Race, Italy sitting out the Great Wars, and Italy giving token aid to Sanjurjo and not actually fighting in Europe. Sounds like we have the beginnings of an IFiMT. TR 15:59, July 30, 2010 (UTC) :Yanina, the Italian analog in Derlavai, was also useless. HT also kept hinting that the entire kingdom was one big closet full of homosexuals in denial. I'm not sure how that works on a national level, though since that was the impression of foreigners and was largely based on assorted Yaninan customs and habits, I guess that makes more sense. It's like the difference between a scene in a WWI novel where Germans bayonet babies and a scene where Britishers convince themselves that Germans are bayoneting babies. :We could have an Italy Sucks section, similar to our France Sucks section; but HT doesn't seem to have that special, all-consuming hatred for Italy that he's shown so many times for France. :I was thinking a section on "Junior Partners in Alliances Suck" might be worthwhile. You've got endless comments by all sorts of WWII characters about every German ally except Finland, Americans in 191 talking about the Quebecois, Rebs talking about Mexicans, Algarvians talking about Yaninans, Japanese talking about Manchus and Koreans, Unkerlanters talking about West Algarvians and Forthwegians, Kersauzon talking about Spanish Atlantis in OA, Soviets talking about Poles in MwIH, Germans talking about Poles in this series, Walsh talking about the Belgians, Gerin talking about the Kubratoi who rode with him against Harvas, and everyone talking about the French. :Counterexamples include the Finns of many a WWII story (and their Zuwayzin counterparts in Derlavai), the Irish of RB, the Apaches of HFR (both of whom were portrayed negatively for other reasons), the Poles and Jews who helped the Lizards fight the Nazis in Col, the Belgian analogs whose names escape me in EIaK, the Royal Hawaiian forces in DoI (or some of them, anyway), and the Canadians, Mormons, Irish, and especially black guerrillas of TL-191. Turtle Fan 19:48, July 30, 2010 (UTC) Bring me Fegelein! FEGELEIN! FEGELEIN! FEGELEIN! So I inadvertently flipped ahead and saw that we're actually going to have a character named Fegelein. How am I supposed to take him seriously? Every time I see his name on the page my mind will be filled with several dozen YouTube videos. Unfortunately, the character is Helmut, and the inspiration of a thousand memes was Hermann. Turtle Fan 04:06, August 1, 2010 (UTC) Wrapping Up I've got some fifty or sixty pages to go. I picked up the pace quite a bit on my reading. Alas, that's preventing me from writing articles as I go; I've just got way too many newly-encountered minor characters to do after I finish up. Well, we're in much better shape than we were last year as far as laying a foundation goes, we'll be all right for going back and writing articles later on, whenever things get slow. Since the next announced novel is TBS, since A&OP may not contain any stories we haven't already written, and since there hasn't been an online short in a dog's age, that should come up from time to time. Impressions: There's certainly more going on than there was in the last one. The characters are starting to differentiate themselves to me, and the war is going in a more interesting direction. I find that if I stop measuring characters against my expectations of what they should be, I can enjoy them more for what they are. Just because Peggy's not spying doesn't mean that her travel scenes aren't useful for providing both texture to the narrative and information that advances the plot. McGill's series of one-and-done vignettes lack relevance, but at least they're worth reading from a human interest perspective; even that was lacking last time. Weinberg is turning out to be a bit more complex and less obnoxiously doctrinaire than he had been. I remember thinking Rudel was poised for some character growth, but clearly that's not the case. Sarah Goldman is just kind of there but her scenes aren't bad, and as for all the rest, I'm at least able to tell them apart now. When we update the POVs' articles, they'll be more substantial than when we created them. The dustjacket, and the teases we got the last few months, were misleading, but that's nothing new. There's not much concern about getting the US into the war, the Scandinavian campaign is a fairly minor sideshow, and resistance in Shanghai against the Japanese isn't much in evidence. Just a reminder not to read too much into those things. The actual stories are pretty good, and though I'm just now getting into the final innings, it looks like we close on a note of some suspense. It's certainly not on the same level of HT's best stories that use this format, Worldwar and the first half of TL-191. But it's a solid outing, and I think I'd call it the best summer release in six or seven years. Turtle Fan 04:51, August 3, 2010 (UTC) Attaboys for Everybody! Looking through the New Pages list, I really am impressed that we were pretty good about writing articles as we went this time, unlike last year when we really didn't bother so much. We'll need to update the POVs yet, and there are some fairly major articles still to be created (Arno Baatz, Vera Kuznetsova, Constantine Jenkins), but all in all it was a really good effort, the kind we frankly haven't put forth in quite a while. As for the stuff mentioned above, with no novel coming out this winter and those wonderful online short stories slowing to a trickle, we'll have plenty of time to get all that done before TBS. Turtle Fan 22:07, August 4, 2010 (UTC)